#1 New York Times bestselling author Kendare Blake returns with the highly anticipated third book in the Three Dark Crowns series!

Katharine sits on the throne, Mirabella and Arsinoe are in hiding, and an unexpected renegade is about to wage a war of her own. The crown has been won, but these queens are far from done.

1) A book goes through a lot of different versions and rounds of editing before it’s complete. What are some “fun facts” or behind the scenes info you can share about the characters from your book or the world you created for it that may or may not have made it to the final draft of the book?

Well, originally I had written out the story of the Blue Queen like its own novel. We would just flash back and forth between the two timelines. In edits we realized the reader didn’t need to know most of that, so we reintegrated the tale of the Blue Queen in another way.

2) Those familiar with the series and those who have heard you discuss the THREE DARK CROWNS series before know that part of your inspiration was pulled from queen bees. Can you elaborate a bit on this for those who may be unfamiliar with the intricacies of bees? Are there any other aspects of the book built around these insects?

So the idea came around, it’s actually a whole, long story, but the crux of it is, I randomly learned that queen bees lay several queen eggs, and when the queen babies hatch out they kill each other until one is left, and she gets to take over the old hive. So that’s where the whole concept came from. And then of course, the island is matriarchal, because a beehive is matriarchal.

4) Which character is the easiest for you to write, the one who makes sense to you the most? Is there a character that you have difficulty understanding and how do you work through that?

I guess Jules gave me the hardest time in Two Dark Reigns, because she was the most lost. A lot of the time she doesn’t know what she’s supposed to be doing or what her purpose is. Arsinoe and Mira…they didn’t give me trouble, per se, but the setting/world of the mainland took awhile to settle. It was a new, unfamiliar place for us all. I think I had to write it twice. Maybe three times?

5) What scene from the book are you most proud of (because of how you handled the atmosphere, characters, dialogue, etc)? Is there a scene that you had difficulty with and just had to “power through” to finish the book? Or a scene that made you very emotional?

I love any scene with an animal in it. Every time Pepper the woodpecker or Braddock the bear shows up, I’m happy. Pepper in particular has some very cute scenes in this one that I hope readers will enjoy.

6) Being a sequel, was there a scene in TWO DARK REIGNS that was gratifying or you had been looking forwards to since the beginning of the series or the previous book?

Since I didn’t know what was going to happen, the joy of writing Two Dark Reigns was finding out! It also gave me some moments of dread, when I knew something was going to happen that I wished we could avoid. Either way, it’s always fun when the book takes over.

Kendare Blake is the author of several novels and short stories, most of which you can find information about via the links above. Her work is sort of dark, always violent, and features passages describing food from when she writes while hungry. She was born in July (for those of you doing book reports) in Seoul, South Korea, but doesn’t speak a lick of Korean, as she was packed off at a very early age to her adoptive parents in the United States. That might be just an excuse, though, as she is pretty bad at learning foreign languages. She enjoys the work of Milan Kundera, Caitlin R Kiernan, Bret Easton Ellis, Richard Linklater, and the late, great Michael Jackson, I mean, come on, he gave us Thriller.